Guns.com on Civil Rights Leader and Gun-owner Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known as a man of profound peace, who applied Gandhi’s teachings of non-violent direct action to the plight of oppressed blacks in America and set the stage for the Civil Rights movement. It then may come as a surprise to some that the Reverend King, in keeping in line with Gandhi, believed strongly in the human right to self-defense and had even applied for a handgun carry permit after his house had been bombed to defend his family from the bigoted minds of that era. He was denied.

Most people think King would be the last person to own a gun. Yet in the 1956, as the civil rights movement heated up, King turned to firearms for self-protection and he even applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

This was not out of the norm for Civil Rights organizers in the 1950s and 60s, nor was it the only weapon King kept around him. On the receiving end of countless death threats from both civilians and law enforcement, armed supporters took turns guarding King’s home and family after his permit was denied knowing too well that the Klan was targeting him for assassination and they would likely receive little assistance from the local authorities.

Indeed William Worthy, a black journalist who covered King in the 1950s, reported that he once went to sit down on an armchair in the King’s living room and almost sat on a loaded gun. King’s advisor Glenn Smiley described the great pacifist’s home as containing “an arsenal.”

John Salter is attacked at a sit-in protest in Mississippi.

T.R.M. Howard, the Mississippi doctor and founder of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, kept a Thompson submachine gun at the foot of his bed and escorted those affected by hate to and from their homes in a heavily-armed caravans. Likewise, white sit in organizer John R. Salter, always “traveled armed” while working in the South in the 50s, once said, “I’m alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms.”

So on this day reserved for the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., Guns.com would like to encourage all of our readers to take a minute remember Dr. King as a man who did more than just pray for peace (he lived it), but was still prepared for war.

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In the days of the Slave-holding South; the greatest fear the white population had was that somehow the Blacks would get their hands on firearms. Even though during the Nat Turner uprising, the rebel slaves regretfully but quickly got rid of the muskets and pistols they took because of the noise and the lack of experience with guns most of them had. After that, slave-holders were incredibly paranoid that black retribution would come with bullets. The appearance of Federal "Colored Troops" during the Civil War heightened these fears (despite the South having allowed some slaves as Confederate soldiers in the closing stages of the conflict). In the Jim Crow South, laws and ordinances were enacted to severely limit the ownership of firearms with strict permission from law enforcement required for the privilege, a permission rarely given to Black people. Both the oppressors and the oppressed understood that having a firearm is a great equalizer and that it is damned hard to illegally kill someone who has the capability of killing you back! When Black soldiers came home from World War II, many trained and skilled in armed combat, the segregationists redoubled their efforts to keep these "equalizers" out of the hands they considered less-than-equal.
Therefore the irony of the Nation's first elected Black President attempting to apply the same sort of limitations of the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the American people as a whole is astounding. I'm afraid Mr. Obama has a very selective grasp of Black American history to propose such draconian measures, and a very strong grasp of the power of propaganda to use the children slain by a madman at Sandy Hook as his Reichstag to jam this program down the throats of American citizens.

What a great man. There are some very memorable quotes from him if you take a minute and Google them. Many people don't know this, he was a Republican. I'm not promoting the party, just sharing one of the greatest leaders, a man who promoted peace, owned a firearm and didn't confine his ideology to the status quo. What would he think if he saw what became of his work and ultimate sacrifice? Did you know that the Dalai Lama - another great leader of peace stated, “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”.

When walking the roads between the cities in those days, travelers were in danger of being ambushed by bad guys hiding behind boulders and waiting for someone to rob. I imagine they would be reluctant to attack a group of 13 men carrying weapons.